Vic, Noa, & Marina after dinner
For some reason, Noa didn't seem to want to go into the ball pit. Vic had been pretty skeptical of it, too, all things considered, but once he'd gotten in, it proved to be weirdly, stupidly enjoyable. Almost like he was floating, except he wasn't -- just sitting on the bottom of a roughly three feet-deep pit, surrounded by balls. It was awesome.
"You're missing out," he called over to her.
‘I don’t think I am,” Noa countered, unconvinced. “There ain’t a lot of room in there, sweetheart, and I don’t suspect I’d enjoy getting crushed by you or Max.” No doubt the wait staff weren’t very happy with her sitting on one of their tables, but it gave her a better view, and she hardly thought it was as bad as a group of adults taking over their ball pit. In either case nobody had said anything yet.
“I’m not trying to relive my youth today, either,” she added with a small laugh.
“And here I thought Vic was supposed to be the old person,” Marina teased, picking up a ball and throwing it at Noa. Whatever ball structure that had been holding her up and preventing her from sinking below the ball line collapsed at the slight effort it took to throw the ball. With a laugh, Marina sank until just the top of her head was visible.
"I am the old person," Vic said contentedly, turning his head to look back and forth between the two of them. Last year, he'd just been happy to have gotten the fuck out of jail, and now shit was even better than he'd thought it could be. Go figure.
Still, as nice as the ball pit was, he stood up and moved over to where Noa was, gesturing for Marina to follow. He was well aware that the rest of their family (and Shelby) were within eyesight, so he was cautious enough about how he approached her, but that didn't mean he wanted to necessarily keep his distance. "Y'all having fun?" he asked. "At my old man party."
“Yeah, sweetheart,” Noa answered, tossing the ball that Marina had thrown at her back into the pit. “It ain’t like I ask a lot from a party lately.” She smiled. “Good food and good company, pretty much.” It had been awhile since they’d had a Dog Park rager, Noa wasn’t even real sure she’d know what to do if one was thrown again.
“I wouldn’t call you that old, though.” Even though she had made a crack about reliving youth. Anyone that wasn’t Sasha or his date could probably be accused of that. “I suspect you still have a lot of life ahead of you.”
Pursing her lips at the topic of conversation they’d accidentally stumbled into, Marina said, “He better. And you too. All of us for that fucking matter.” As far as she was concerned, none of them were going anywhere anytime soon. She wasn’t sure when she’d begun thinking about the three of them as a package deal, but apparently that was where her mindset was at these days.
"Yeah, I… agree." Vic, too, was puzzled by how they'd landed here, but it didn't matter in the end. He half-stood, half-sat on the edge of a table, knowing enough to not lean his entire weight on its surface, and smiled at the two women, the expression soft somehow on his usually stolid face. "I ain't planning on going anywhere, so both of you have nothing to worry about."
Noa smiled. “I believe you,” she replied. “I never used to, but..” she shrugged one shoulder. It was strange but good to let go of the belief that the people around her would leave her before she left them. It hadn’t been so long ago that she used to tell people she knew Jonny would go before she did, but that was a hard thought to live under. A lonely one too. Even if her track record with people up until now supported it.
“It’s a nice change.”
"Real nice." Vic didn't think any of them had intended for this to become what it was between the three of them, but now that they were here it only served to make him wonder what had taken them so long.
He was mindful of the guests at his birthday party, and their presence stopped him from reaching out to touch the two of them. He'd just have to make up for it later, but the whole thing did make him wonder if he'd have to tell Sasha and Max about this eventually. Probably, if this became more than what it was -- if he even knew what it was.